Pantera

Notwithstanding the Josephus passages, an unhelpful one in Pliny and an uncertain one in Suetonius...

Whether or not Tacitus got his information about Jesus from an independent source is a subject of debate (Kirby discusses the arguments for and against <a href="http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/tacitus.html" target="_blank">here</a>), but to say that secular history has nothing to say about Jesus is just plain wrong.

[ December 23, 2001: Message edited by: Pantera ]</p>

lpetrich

Actually, the dying-and-rising god is a very good parallel, because that's a common pagan mythical motif. Especially if one includes all the deities and heroes who visit the realm of the dead without "dying" in a normal sense.

And literal divine paternity is also very common -- consider all of Zeus's offspring, including (some had claimed) Alexander the Great.

Infertile women who become miraculously fertile are, however, a poor analogy; Mary is not depicted as having been infertile for a long time.

So it's reasonable to conclude that the virgin-birth idea is a pagan borrowing.

Pantera

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I think most people would agree that there may well have been some flow of ideas between Christianity and the various pagan cults - though probably less than was widely believed at the turn of the last century, and the direction of the flow is not always clear. However, the possibility of some borrowing isn't the point. The point is the contention that Jesus was an entirely mythical being created from bits and pieces of different pagan legends, and in particular the rather shoddy manner in which this book appears to try to make that claim.



Undoubtably. Note though that Zeus took physical form and had sex with his various maidens, so while there may be something in the divine paternity idea, comparisons with the virgin birth should not be pushed too hard.

Nice example with Alexander the Great as well. While many myths did spring up about him, there was doubtless still a historical figure somewhere underneath the myths.



It is however a greater miracle than an elderly or infertile woman giving birth - the particular detail was likely inspired by the prediction of a virgin birth in Isiah (in the Greek version at least), and the motivation for the story appears to be (1) to establish the divine paternity of Jesus (2) to fulfil the Old Testament prophecy and (3) to give Jesus a miraculous birth which ranks above those of Isaac, Samson and Samuel. We know the gospel authors took the majority of their inspiration from the Old Testament because most of the other details are lifted from OT stories, and in Luke John the Baptist gets a fairly classic miraculous Hebrew birth - so he is also very special indeed, but still less important than Jesus.

{Edited for those damned tags}

[ December 25, 2001: Message edited by: Pantera ]</p>

Toto

I have only skimmed parts of the book, but I got the impression that Freke and Gande (unlike Earl Doherty) are not trying to present a scholarly thesis or an unbiased critique of the state of knowledge. They want to remake Christianity as a gnostic religion, so they prefer a non-existant, spiritual Jesus.

In effect, they want to go back to the second century, and take a different fork in the path. They agree with Spong that Christianity much change or die, and this is their agenda for change.

Undercurrent

I must say that I had taken the book's claim as being much more compelling than I do now in the light of these criticisms. It seems like a fairly non-subjective statement for someone to make -- either I(E/H)SOUS is a common name or it isn't.

I'll definitely be looking for the the references the book cites to get to the bottom of this. I'm guessing the LANL library will have them.

m.

Toto

The claim that Iesous (as opposed to another form of Joshua, or another name) was chosen for its numeric value of 888 is a very common one. It involves the ancient practice of gematria, explained more here:

<a href="http://www.jesus8880.com/homepage.htm" target="_blank">http://www.jesus8880.com/homepage.htm</a>

(and reviewed favorably in the <a href="http://www.infidels.org/infidels/newsletter/1999/may.html" target="_blank">Internet Infidels newsletter in 1999</a>.)

You can also put gematria into any search engine and find a lot of sites.

The people who wrote the Gospels apparently believed in gematria, so I would not reject the idea out of hand that there are some numeric hidden keys in the Bible. I haven't studied it enough to decide if this is just a footnote, or actually explains anything.

[ December 25, 2001: Message edited by: Toto ]</p>

Pantera

I had a look at Freke and Gandy's <a href="http://www.thorsons.com" target="_blank">UK publisher's homepage</a>. It makes for interesting reading.

But it gets better. Thorsons appears to be part of <a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/hc/home.asp" target="_blank">Harper Collins</a>. While the standing of Harper-Collins has gone down somewhat since Rupert Murdoch got his hands on it, it still aspires to being a reputable publisher of serious books. They publish <a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0060629789" target="_blank">works by The Jesus Seminar</a>, for instance. Publishing nonsense on astrology would destroy their serious reputation, but it seems to sell well, so having arms like Thorsons allows them to cash in on the market for such stuff while not sullying their own label.

While this may technically be an ad hominem point, I find it quite interesting that The Jesus Mysteries' own publisher appears to think that it belongs in the same bin as <a href="http://www.thorsons.com/search/catalogue.asp?searchterm=jesus&ADV=N&author=True&t itle=True&genre=True&keyword=True&id=7139&pagenum= 1" target="_blank">The Messangers: A true story of Angelic Presence</a>,<a href="http://www.thorsons.com/search/catalogue.asp?searchterm=atlantis&ADV=N&author=Tru e&title=True&genre=True&keyword=True&id=7143&pagen um=1" target="_blank">The Ancient Wisdom of Atlantis</a> and <a href="http://www.thorsons.com/search/catalogue.asp?searchterm=atlantis&ADV=N&author=Tru e&title=True&genre=True&keyword=True&id=7041&pagen um=1" target="_blank">Gods Of The Dawn: The Message of The Pyramids and The True Stargate Mystery</a>. Draw what conclusions you will.

Toto

Pantera - this sounds about right. Freke and Gandy are not anti-religious critics or skeptics of any sort. They are New Age neo-pagan proponents. They dedicate their book to "the Christ within you." They speak favorably of astrological concepts in their book. They really want to reform Christianity by reviving the gnostic heresies, not destroy it.

Freke gives seminars in personal growth, spiritual awakening, and world mysticism, not in historic criticism.

This is getting into another topic, but the "New Age" made a deliberate decision to be open minded about astrology, the paranormal, and other topics that rationalists consider "woo woo". They felt that, by being too skeptical, you might throw the baby out with the bathwater. This has resulted in New Age marketers, like the publishers of The Jesus Mysteries, offering all sorts of alternative products which lack the skeptics' seal of approval. Most of them will not pan out, but some of them might. (There's nothing mystical about Pilates or massage therapy, for instance.)

I would not look to this book as a primary source, but I would try not to consider it guilty by association.

[ December 26, 2001: Message edited by: Toto ]</p>

Pantera

I know I shouldn't really poison the well... it's just that when you have such a large, slow-moving target it's rather difficult not to take pot-shots at it sometimes. I suppose it is possible that a hyper-credulous new-age type label might end up publishing something of value (theories about monkeys and typewriters spring to mind), but the fact that the book comes from a publisher whose usual policy seems to be to ask its readers to leave their critical faculties at the door is yet another thing which fails to make me want to rush out and buy it. Open minds are good - it's gaping ones I'm not so keen on. Oops - there I go again.

But the opening paragraph of the synopsis for Gods of the Dawn is one I will treasure for a long time indeed.

Yeah - let's blow those boring orthodox theories away!

Toto

I'd like to keep this topic alive. (I may have some more to post shortly.) But I would like to point out that Bede has written a particularly obtuse <a href="http://www.tektonics.org/TF.JM_060960581X.html" target="_blank">review of the book</a>, in which he states that

Bede somehow manages to avoid discussing most of the book, although he complains about the authors' lack of scholarly credentials at length, and then complains that some of their sources are so old and obscure that he can't find them in his library.

Earl Doherty has a more informative and positive <a href="http://human.st/jesuspuzzle/BkrvTJM.htm" target="_blank">review</a> on his site.